Christmas Hopes - God's Topsy-Turvy Ways

Preached on the Second Sunday in Advent, December 13, 2015

Scripture readings: 1 Samuel 16:1-13; Luke 1:39-56

A Bit of Snow, Desert Aire/Mattawa, WA
November-December 2015

There was a boy playing baseball all by himself. He yelled, “I am the greatest batter in the world!” And he tossed his ball up in the air, and when it came down he swung at it, and he missed, and he yelled, “Strike One!” Then he yelled again, “I am the greatest batter in the world!” and he tossed his ball up in the air, and when it came down, he swung at it again, and he missed, and he yelled, “Strike two!” And he yelled, “I am the greatest batter in the world!” and he tossed that ball up in the air, and when it came down, he swung at it again, and he missed, and he yelled, “Strike three!

Wow! What a pitcher! I am the greatest pitcher in the world!”

Now that's not bad. There is one thing you can say about that boy. He was playing his game in the spirit of an undeserved happiness. I believe that this is what true humility is like: like living in the presence of an undeserved happiness. The boy shows us the picture of what true, childlike humility is.

We normally think of humility as painful and sad. But I believe that the pain and sadness only happen when we are learning humility against our wills. Elizabeth and Mary show us the picture of what humility is like when the lesson has been learned.

If we had been there, we might have noticed two things. We might have noticed that we were in the presence of holiness. (By holiness, I mean that we might have noticed that we were in the presence of something of the greatest importance and purpose.) We also would surely have smiled and laughed out loud at the sight of the weathered old pregnant woman and the young pregnant teenager singing to each other.

Some years ago, one of my churches put on a cantata for Holy Week. It was a long piece of classical music written by a French opera composer. (“The Seven Last Words of Christ” by Theodore Dubois) It was seriously artistic music. After the concert, someone from the audience came up to me and told me how much he had enjoyed it. He said, “You all sounded just like ordinary people singing opera.”

Think of the possibilities in that double edged compliment. In fact the director was going to record us so that we could each have a copy as a souvenir, but he decided not even to let us hear it: ordinary people singing opera. We understood without asking why. But we enjoyed doing what we did with an undeserved happiness.

Ancient Elizabeth was the mother of a prophet. Young Mary was the Mother of God (in a way; not in eternity, but in time). These things didn’t fit together very well. Who, in heaven’s name, could possibly be in charge of such a mixed up scheme. It was holy and hilarious.

David was the eighth son. Seven was the number of perfection. Eight was just redundant. The seven brothers were men and warriors who looked the part of kings. David was just a kid, and he acted like it too. David was the straggler. The brothers weren’t a litter, but David was the runt of them.

David, for all his faults and moral struggles, was the picture of what a king should be, and that was the picture that God followed when God became human. What a crazy, mixed up idea. David was the shepherd king, and Jesus’ first followers were the shepherds.

Mary and Elizabeth give us a picture of holiness, and singing, and laughter; and then there is danger too.

Both Elizabeth and Mary were women in danger: Elizabeth, bearing a child in her old age (that wasn’t safe); and Mary, secretly pregnant with a child who could get her into a lot of trouble, with Joseph, and with their two families, and with the whole village where they planned to live, and have a business, and raise their family. Both of their lives were at risk. And here they were singing!

These two women, or these two girls (for women are always girls, in heart, which is why they live longer than men), stood at the very center of what God was doing in the universe, yet no scholar or ruler in the world would have taken them seriously. They weren’t just singing. They were prophesying. They were prophets full of the Holy Spirit. Their songs were about the future, and the part they were playing in the kingdom of God.

If anyone with any real authority took them seriously, these two women would be in trouble again. They would have to be put in their place. And yet they were singing. For the moment, they were absolutely confident and happy.

They knew that their happiness was incomprehensible to others. They knew it would be a scandal to others. They knew that their happiness had nothing to do with who they were, or with what they had done; because they weren’t anyone in particular. In fact, they were second class human beings; because they were women living in their time and place.

They had not done anything at all to cause the reason for their happiness. Their happiness was gracious and undeserved. God had accepted them. God had given them a part to play that they could never be qualified for.

Their happiness wasn’t for show. No one of importance was paying attention. Their happiness wasn’t pretend. And it wasn’t crazy.

Along with Zechariah, these women were among the three people in the whole world who knew what was really going on in the world. They were the only ones in the world who were in touch with reality.

Many people in the world go around thinking they are happy when they don’t have the slightest notion of the things that really belong to happiness. But these women knew. Every one in the world would have thought these women were crazy: but, compared with them, it was everyone else who was crazy.

Here we see a picture of part of our Christmas hope. These women knew what God was really doing; and what truly mattered most to God. They knew what God intended to do through them. And they could take a good sober look at themselves, and sing and laugh about it all. It was well worth all the potential risks, and dangers, and the skepticism of others.

What this picture tells us is that God’s promise is that the world is crazy and we are not. Human power does not overrule God’s cause, God’s power, God’s kingdom.

For instance; the emperor Augustus, in Rome, was ordering a census of his empire. His royal decree forced Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem. So, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, instead of in Nazareth. They traveled in obedience to the orders of the Roman emperor.

But the Old Testament prophet Micah had predicted the birth of the messiah in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), seven hundred years before it happened. So who was on top of things? Who was making things happen?

The culture of the Roman Empire held that dignity and power were the ultimate values. The Kingdom of God held that humility and faithful love were the ultimate values.

Rome held the power, and maintained the roads. The Roman peace enabled the disciples of Jesus to travel and bring the good news to the known world, with a minimum of trouble. And so, who was really making things happen?

The Greeks and Romans, together, had built a civilization that had so many outposts, spread so far, that the disciples of Jesus, knowing a little Greek, could make themselves understood from Britain, to Ethiopia, to India. Because of the power of Greece and Rome, the disciples could spread the gospel and its values of humility and faithful love farther than the emperor could send his own soldiers.

What happened in Rome was of the greatest importance. And what Jesus would do, and what the disciples and the early Christians would do, would have a growing influence in the Roman capital. And what happened in Rome, in the long struggle between the Christians and the pagans, would serve the kingdom of Jesus.

There were times, for a couple of centuries in Rome, where portions of the church had to truly go underground, living in the caves and catacombs beneath the capital, in order to survive. But the Kingdom of Jesus survived the Kingdom of Rome.

So, who was really in charge?  In the very middle of history, God is in charge. At the very end of history, God will be in charge.

The Lord’s Supper is a table set in a topsy-turvy world. There are people and parts of society that look like they are on top, but they are not. They look like they are the future, but they are not.

The Lord’s Table is the table of a kingdom where it is the poor, the small, those held in contempt, who are fed. It teaches us to be very careful about the ones we think of as poor, and small, and contemptible. Those who think they are something, and those who think they are the future, are always sent away empty.

The kingdom is designed for those who can enjoy the presence of an undeserved happiness. King Jesus found his happiness in places where it seemed the most unlikely for someone who came down from heaven. The hands that move the world were the hands in a manger that wrapped tightly around the finger of Mary. The heart that rules the world was pierced, by a Roman spear on the cross. And here we come to be fed by this hand, and loved by this heart, and saved by the real King who rules here.

Shepherds - A Christmas Joy

Preached on the Third Sunday in Advent, December 15

Scriptures: 2 Samuel 6:1-16; Luke 2:8-20

The story we read about King David, and the story we read about the birth of Jesus go together. They both tell us about joyful shepherds. King David had been a shepherd boy. The shepherds were the only people of Bethlehem to be called by the angels to visit the baby shepherd king.

Advent 2013:
Palouse Falls & Canyon, Washtucna Community Church

Shepherds became a picture for how the people of Israel came to think about their kings and leaders. Shepherds became their picture of the Messiah, and their picture of God himself. Psalm 23 says it: “The Lord is my Shepherd.” It sounded great.

But, by the time of Jesus, real shepherds had come down a lot in the world. All of the Pharisees’ rules about washing and being clean left them with a religiously unclean reputation.

They lived in a land where water was scarce. They worked with livestock who commonly presented them so many of the things that their religion of cleanliness said not to touch: blood, and goo, and pooh.

Uncleanness was considered contagious. People avoided them, and never touched them.

Plus, they were poor and they lived out of sight in the hills. Who knew what they were up to out there? When they passed through town things seemed to go missing. Their testimony was not allowed in a court of law. Shepherds were no-goods who lived down to other people’s low expectations.

But the shepherds, in Luke’s gospel, are joyful, because they have good news. They have found the Messiah, the Christ: a Messiah who seemed exactly for people like them. Here was a Messiah, not for kings and governments, but for shepherds; a Messiah for peasants and the poor: not in a palace but a stable, not in a bed but a manger (a feed trough for livestock). The Messiah had come to run-down, tiny Bethlehem. That was the good news.

David was a shepherd in Bethlehem when it was only hard work, and not bad work. David became a king, but he stayed a shepherd, in his heart, for the real King. He was the one who first wrote those words: “The Lord is my shepherd.”  David was joyful because he believed he could bring his king home to be his new neighbor.

There was that little boy who ran into the house, after a good spring rain, yelling, “Mommy, mommy the toads are moving into our yard. There stools are here already!”

God’s furniture was arriving in Jerusalem. The best part of it was a golden box called the Ark of the Covenant (the box of the promise). It was shaped like a boxy chair, or throne, with angels for armrests.

Inside the seat of the box were the stone tablets on which Moses wrote the Ten Commandments. There was also a jar of manna, the strange, grainy stuff that the people of Israel ate in the wilderness, which appeared on the ground every morning, except on the day of rest. And there was the staff of Aaron that had come to life as an almond tree.

The amazing thing about the Ark, this chair, was that no one was allowed to sit on it, or even to touch it. It was too holy to handle and so it was carried around on poles. It was the throne of God. As holy and as scary as this chair could be, it meant that God was moving into the neighborhood.

He was never seen sitting there, with the naked eye, but it was the moveable place where God chose to come and be present, when the time was right. The Ark, the box of the promise, stood for the presence of the awesome and living God.

So when David brought the ark to Jerusalem, he brought the real King to their town. This was great news. The Shepherd David was full of joy.

David was so happy that he danced for joy. He did a crazy dance in a revealing costume. As a symbol of his desire to serve the Lord, he wore a type of clothing worn by the priests who served in the holy place where the Ark was kept. It was a short work robe, called an ephod. It is just a Hebrew word for a plain white wool tunic that barely reached down to the knee. Now the high priest wore a long ephod, down to his feet with a little fringe of bells and beads.

David didn’t dress like a high priest. He was just a shepherd, even though he was a King. So he wore a common ephod, the priestly work robe. It was short so it wouldn’t trip them up, or drag on the bloody ground when they sacrificed cattle, and sheep, and goats. And they wore a loincloth (a kind of underwear) underneath, just like everyone wore.

David’s wife, Queen Michal, was the daughter of King Saul. Saul wasn’t born a king, but he acted and thought like a king. He worried about his honor and his power, as a king, and he taught his daughter to think like royalty.

Now a kingly man (like Michal’s father) had far too much dignity to be seen working, or dressed down for work. For a king to wear a robe that barely reached his knees (like common work clothes) was as shameful as being naked. For a real king to move fast, like David was in his dance (unless you were in battle) was undignified and shameful. A king could watch dancing, but not do it. A king was too important to dance for joy. A kingly king (like Michal thought her husband David ought to be) was too big, too important, a man to act out his joy.

The lowly shepherds of the gospels weren’t big enough to share the joy of the good news. The kingly shepherd, David, was supposed to be too big to share the joy of the good news. But, too bad for that! They all forgot about themselves and their size in life, and they enjoyed it anyway.

Sometimes there is bad news: grim, and hard, and tough, and scary. God himself doesn’t like bad news, even when he has to give it. God has designed the whole direction of his work to bring good news. And God’s good news usually has something to do with God choosing to come to us in a new way.

This was true in David’s Jerusalem. God would be with his people in a new way. This was also true in the shepherds’ Bethlehem. This is true here and now. God wants to come to us. God is coming. God wants to do something new with us. God wants to be with us in a new way.

God is doing something. God wants to be found by you. God will lead you to himself, to be “God with you”. That’s the news we have read about, today. It is the source of God’s joy that is given to small, self-forgetting people like the shepherds

The good news is worth rejoicing about. I think Advent and Christmas challenge us to see how ready we are to truly enjoy truly good news, and not leave it out of Christmas.

There are so many things that get in the way of this. There was the lowly shepherds’ raw deal in life, and the way they had built their lives by living down to the low expectations of others.

There was Michal’s dignity and coolness. She was cool in the worst sense of the word. She was too cool for joy.

We have a raw deal. Or we are too dignified or cool to change. We have got to be rational. We have got to be serious. We have got to be realistic. We have got to get so many things done. We are in over our heads. There are dangers and risks ahead. There are burdens to bear. There are people who rely on us. All these things make us too big, too much the center, to enjoy the news of God with us. It all comes down to, “Yes, but….”

Michal needed, more than anything, to tuck up her royal robes and dance. She needed to stop being so darn big. The shepherds left their flocks to God and forgot about them. They ran to see the king in the manger. They were not too small for the best news in the world to be their good news. Running was their dance.

God’s good news gives you better things to think about than about what you have or don’t have; what you might lose, or what you have lost; how you look to others, and to yourself; what your possibilities may be, compared with others. God’s good news gives you better things to think about.

You are loved by God. You can still receive that love, and enjoy it, and share it. Like David, you are not too big for this, like the shepherds you are not too small.

The proof of God’s good news is that baby in the manger. That is where God comes to you. We want a nice palace for God to come to us. God comes to whatever place in our life serves as, and smells like, a manger in a stable.

Jesus lying in a manger was a sign that things were not going well for Mary and Joseph. No one would take them in, but God was with them anyway.

It was the same kind of sign to the shepherds. No one wanted to touch them, but God let them come and perhaps touch him. Mary and Joseph were outcasts too and they wouldn’t have said “no”.

The shepherds were too small in life to be believed, but they told everyone anyway? They were happy; what did they care? They made an impression on the whole town, but we don’t see the town going to meet their Messiah. The others must have felt too big and important to bother and find this joy.

Jesus was the living presence of God with the shepherds. Jesus, in the manger, was a sign just for them, or for anyone else who could see himself or herself typecast in the shepherds’ part. We can know the joy of Christmas if we are like Linus with his embarrassing, dirty blanket in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.

The manger is just as important as the cross, because it is just as humble as the cross. They are both desperate in their own ways. They are both a sacrifice for the sins of the world. The manger (like the cross) says that God is for you, no matter what. His birth is for you, to bring you to him; just as you are, without any games, or pretending, or posing.

God will not leave you just as you are, but God wants start something new with you. He wants you to know him and enjoy him. You can never be “not quite good enough” for him. The manger says he came for you, unless you are too big for him.

The Great Story – The Making of a Heart like God’s Heart: The Shepherd King

Preached on Sunday, November 17, 2013

Scripture readings: 1 Samuel 17:17-54; 1 Samuel 24:1-22

The story of David and King Saul in the cave is very serious and also very nearly crazy and absurd; absurdly funny. This is basic. I don’t think we can understand the Bible, or the God who is revealed in the Bible, or God’s way of working in our lives without understanding this foundation of seriousness and absurdity.

Some Creatures: Summer and Fall of 2013

The stories of our life are often very serious and it is often hard to make sense of them. Until we do, these parts of our life can seem crazy and absurd. They seem like thing that should not happen, or cannot happen; and yet they do happen. As God’s people we must learn to build our lives through these serious parts of our lives that seem as though they should not happen. We need to learn to live through these parts of our life by faith

I have to confess that I can never read about Saul using the cave for a bathroom, and David being able to argue with his men at the back of that cave, and sneaking up behind King Saul, and cutting off a corner of the king’s robe, with a knife, undetected, without my wondering about how it was even possible.

David should not have been able to cut the corner of Saul’s robe without getting caught. Saul shouldn’t have been allowed to escape from the cave. Saul should have ordered his army to slaughter David and his men, when David came out of hiding. Saul should not have responded to David by weeping. David should never have been forced to live so much of his life on the verge of destruction.

Most of what I can say to explain it (or to explain it away) is just that I have had a lot things happen to me that shouldn’t have happened. There have been so many things that were highly improbable and completely ridiculous. The improbable and the ridiculous do happen.

And then there is an old limerick that suggests a biological process. This process could have resulted in a miracle for David. The most ridiculous thing in the world could have covered up David’s movements in the cave. The limerick goes like this.

I sat next the duchess at tea,

It was just as I feared it would be.

Her roarings abdominal were simply abominable.

And everyone thought it was me.

Yes, the king could have had the same symptoms as the duchess; only much, much, much worse. The king could have made quite a racket all by himself. We know that Saul was always very up tight.

One of the foundations of The Story of the Bible is the process of how the shepherd boy (David) became the king of Israel. It is another part of the story that tells how such a king as David could be the foundation of the whole gospel, the good news of Jesus. David was an ancestor of Jesus. Jesus is the Christ, the King, the Messiah, the Lord’s anointed; somehow, strangely based on the kingship of David.

We have, before us, a stretch of The Story that tells us the long process of how a shepherd boy could become a king. In this story we see how God works in human lives. If we can imagine the process of God working in you and me, this part of the story shows us that God shapes us and works in our lives through a long process of struggle

A struggle can just be a long, hard job. In such a job you probably have some set of tools to do the work. A struggle can also be a fight, or a battle. In such a battle you probably have a set of weapons.

In the Old Testament Book of Proverbs there is a line about people being like tools or weapons. It goes like this: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)

God shaped David’s life and character by means of the strangest tools and weapons: people who grossly underestimated him, people who hated and despised him, people who loved him, and people who feared him. God shaped David through insanity, and fear, and betrayal, and confusion. God changed David, or transformed David, by taking him, just as he was, and mixing him up, over a long period of time, through many crises, with many people, through hot and cold, and thick and thin.

Every person and every success and failure is a tool of God in a never ending project. There is that saying from years ago: “Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet.”

The judge and prophet Samuel, who secretly set the boy David apart as king, said this to King Saul, “The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.” (1 Samuel 13:14)

But just when was David a man after God’s own heart; when he was a shepherd boy, when he was a commander of Saul’s troops, when he was on the run, when he was the miserable father of spoiled children? Were you a person after God’s own heart when God first made himself to be real, and beautiful, and strong, and good, and desirable in your heart? By the grace of God you were. And are you a person after God’s own heart today? By God’s grace you are.

But do other people think so? Do you always think so? Or do you see some awful difference, some great gap, between God’s heart and your own? By God’s grace you do see it: you must see it. Yes!

Yet there is a danger in not seeing what God has done, or what God has put there, or what God may do. There is the continual danger of the sin of underestimation. You underestimate others and they underestimate you. We all underestimate the raw materials God is giving us to work with. We can’t begin to know how to estimate our successes or our failures, our virtues or our sins, or our time in life. We don’t know how to place the right value (God’s value) on all these parts of our lives, or on all of these people.

When Samuel went to Bethlehem to find the man who would be the king after God’s own heart, he went to the home of Jesse because he was told to find that king there, among Jesse’s sons. The very first son, the oldest, looked like the one. He looked every bit the king.

The Lord told Samuel “no”. The Lord said, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

David’s father knew that Samuel was there to make something important happen, and so he had his seven sons there, ready to be part of it. Only he had an eighth son who clearly wasn’t needed for something so important. David was the eighth son.

David was the spare boy. Maybe he was the runt. Clearly his older brothers saw him this way. When they were out facing Goliath (or not facing him) and David came with the supplies, they saw their youngest brother as a nuisance and a brat. Maybe they had good reason to think of him that way. Then David must have been a nuisance and a brat after God’s own heart, and his brothers were underestimating him.

The more I read about the Goliath business, the more I think that King Saul was only using David. Sending a kid against Goliath was an excellent way to insult the champion warrior, or to put him off guard. Saul deliberately sent David into what had to be certain death.

The only good that could come of it was that David might beat the odds and injure Goliath just enough to put him off the field. Goliath might get so mad at the sight of David that he could get careless.

Most of all, if Goliath killed a kid like David, it would not be in a fair fight and the term of the duel could be disputed. The terms were that the winning champion would decide which nation had defeated the other, and which nation would serve the other. In a clearly unfair fight, all bets were off.

What Saul saw as a game and a plot, his son, the crown prince Jonathan, saw as the evidence of God at work in a kid of faith, and courage, and humility. As cocky as David seemed, he had no problem admitting that he wasn’t a warrior who could wear a king’s armor, or that he could fight with anything but a slingshot.

This is a courageous humility. So we read that as soon as Jonathan saw David, he loved him.

Jonathan was very close to being a person after God’s own heart, and he saw that David was just such a person. And so Jonathan saved David’s life more than once, and he was like a good brother to him; much better than David’s own brothers, and his best friend.

The tools and weapons that God used in David’s life (in order to transform him from a shepherd into a king) included commanding the Saul’s troops and marrying the king’s daughter. They also included nursing an insane king; singing and playing music to calm him, running from him when the king tried to pin him to the wall with a spear. The tools of God included years on the run, years of danger, and years away from anything like home.

In the end, when David was king, when we are told that “the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies” (2 Samuel 7:1), David was grateful. We might not have been so grateful. We might have resented all the wasted years.

We underestimate God’s raw material for our lives. We underestimate God’s tools and weapons. We think that God owes us rest, when rest is a prize, a miracle. David’s real life was never about rest, except as a miracle.

Rest was a blessing that came in the moments when God gave it. Rest was something to be passionately enjoyed and celebrated and lived to the fullest, but always as a blessing and a miracle.

Sometimes, in his worst possible moments, David did not underestimate or undervalue the tools and the weapons of God. And so, after he cut off the corner of the king’s robe, he was cut to his own heart. He went out and showed himself to Saul; and David called Saul, “My father!” (1 Samuel 24:11)

Even though Saul had devoted his life to destroying David, something in David’s experience, when he was still young, kept him loving the mad king. There was something between the times of madness, and maybe even during those times, when David had played his harp for him, that Saul had become just like a father to him.

Sometimes David would fail at this but (in the case of Saul) David had a heart after God’s own heart. So David could see the very thing that God had seen and loved, when God told the prophet to make Saul king. David never turned his back on that. David never undervalued the gift of Saul.

David could see what the others around the king could not see, because those others were using Saul for themselves and for their own security and their own ambtions. They were underestimating and undervaluing Saul. They were making a mistake that David would never make because he was a person after God’s own heart.

David was a person after God’s own heart, and he could an honest look at “Saul the mistake”, and love him, and see what God might do with him, or might have done with him. At least for a while, David’s confession broke Saul’s heart and brought him to tears. David’s sorrow led to Saul’s shaky change of heart.

Though we hardly see it or hear it, and though it didn’t change Saul’s future or his final failure, Saul may have gone to his end with a better heart than he had for many years. David’s willingness to speak to Saul’s heart shows us God’s heart, and this is the God we meet in Jesus, the Son of David.

We underestimate the people around us as the proper and legitimate tools of God (if we can call them that). We do not love them. We are not thankful for them though they are working on us through the hands of God who shapes us through them. We are not thankful for the times in our lives when God may be doing his most important work. We are not always people like David: people after God’s own heart.

God uses strange tools and weapons in his struggle with us and in his long, long labor of love. God became human in Jesus in order to be the iron that sharpens our iron. Just as David went out to fight the giant with sticks and stones, God comes to us with sticks and stones: the sticks of a cross and the stone that covered his grave.

We are not changed into people after God’s own heart by our intelligence and courage, or by our practice and wisdom, but by receiving the mercy of a cross and the defeat of a grave. As the apostle Paul says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)

Our hearts are only made in the image of God’s own heart through receiving the power of mercy and grace. Only through the strangest tools, in the hands of Jesus, does God make our hearts like his. Will we let him change us and give us a heart that sees all the strange seasons in our life, and all the people in our life, as the work of God to make our hearts like his own heart?

The Jesus Song-Book: Don't Panic

Preached on Sunday, August 19, 2012

Scripture readings:  Psalm 11:1-7; Matthew 7:24-27 

There is a saying that goes like this: “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!” This came to mind while I was thinking about this psalm. ‘In the Lord I take refuge. How can you say to me, “Flee like a bird to your mountain”?’ “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:1-3)

There were people around David telling him to give up. But it was much more dramatic than that. It was a warning. It was urgent. Run for your life. Let go of the rope. Fly away! It was all in the spirit of panic.

Stormy Summer Sky, Washtucna WA

There are no clues in this Psalm telling us the situation behind the fears and the warnings. The truth is that David did a lot of running in his life.

David became a successful king of his people, but he was a very unsuccessful father of his own children. He seemed not to know what to do with them. He ignored horrible things done by his children to each other when they grew older, including rape and murder.



His failure as a father created some monsters, like his son Absalom. Absalom grew up in the chaos, and grew bitter, and staged a coup that brought down the government for a while. He essentially out maneuvered his father, and David had to go on the run. He had to run for his life.

The foundations of his life and everything he had built seemed on the verge of destruction. And David ran away.

He ran away in order to fight back. This was a hard battle for him to face, but he decided to resist and fight; if not for himself, at least to resist and fight for those who had served him; for those who had befriended him along the way, for those whose lives depended on him.

Here David was not the one who wanted to tie a knot at the end of his rope and hold on. It was his friends who were telling him not to fly away (at least not too far); and not to run but to stand his ground.

It was earlier in his life that David had learned to be a strategic runner. As a teenager, with a slingshot, he had killed the gigantic enemy soldier named Goliath, in a duel to the death. It was a duel fought to decide a stalemated battle.

David’s victory was a victory for his people. Because of his surprising success, he became a favorite warrior of King Saul.

He won Saul’s heart. He won the hand of the King’s daughter in marriage. He won a high commission in the army. He won the friendship of the Crown Prince Jonathan, the heir to the throne. He won the affection of his people.

My Garden "Early Girl" (Variety) Tomato

David seemed to live a charmed life, a blessed life. He was a good man who came out of nowhere and was given life’s gifts on a silver platter.

Then he won the suspicion of the king. He won the status of being marked for death. In spite of David’s loyalty, Saul saw him as a dangerous rival.

David had to become a runner; a strategic runner. He actually continued to serve the king and his people. He continued to fight against their enemies. He defended the frontier. More than once, he protected the king’s life who continued to mark him for death.

But David did this on the run. He often just barely escaped the king’s raids and traps. Those who wanted the king’s favor would report to him on David’s movements and whereabouts. David survived by making himself a moving target; a running target.

David seemed to live a charmed life in reverse. He was a good man who was marked as a bad man. The hand that had given him everything now took everything away. David’s gifts as a commander in the king’s army now made him a chief of the outlaws.

His good motives where not honored. His good work was not rewarded. His family ties betrayed him. The way his country was supposed to work, didn’t work for him. This went on for years; for years. The foundations of his good life had been destroyed, and what could the righteous do?

Apparently David had friends who advised him to give it all up and walk away from a bad game. Just walk off the field; or else run. Fly away as fast and as far as you can.

David did not follow their advice. He was a disciplined and strategic runner. He worked his running into the game. He might run and run, but he would never leave the field. He refused to go away.

During the American Revolution, our army was never a match for the British army. We lost most of our major battles against the British. General George Washington learned, the hard way, not to fight the British on their terms. Washington really won the war by effectively running away, but also (most importantly) by never going away. He never stopped.



My Garden "Cubanelle" (Variety) Pepper

I remember, one time after I had grown up, arguing with my dad. I feel foolish telling you what the argument was about. It wasn’t about anything important. It was this. My dad believed that the pyramids of Egypt were built by aliens from outer space. I politely disagreed.

Every now and then he would bring this up. One day he did it again, and something snapped, and I couldn’t take it any more. So I argued with him.

We just went on, and on, and on, and on, and on. Finally, my dad said, “You don’t know when to stop.” If he had only thought about this, he would realize that I had learned this from him. Once my dad made up his mind about something, he would never give it up. He would never stop.

There is a great power that comes from not having enough sense to stop. Sometimes we can call this faith.

David had friends who wanted him to stop. They had arguments that made perfect sense. David was in an impossible situation. His position was completely unwinnable. David was completely outmatched, but he tied a knot on the end of his rope and he held on.

Actually it was a knot that was there all along. It was God. There is a saying that goes like this: “When you get to your wit’s end you will find God lives there.”

For a long time the question in this psalm has fascinated me: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The answer, as I see it, comes at the end of the psalm: “The Lord is righteous, he loves justice; the upright will see his face.”

David knew that he had a choice. It was a choice of either looking at the crumbling foundations or looking at God. Righteousness, here, is about doing what is right, saying what is right, thinking what is right, believing what is right, and never stopping.

David’s friends were looking at the foundations being destroyed and they were dismayed. They were on the verge of panic, and they wanted to involve David in their panic.

David was looking at something completely different. He was looking at who the Lord is, and what the Lord loves. David saw the Lord’s face, and he saw nothing there to dismay him; and he saw no reason there for panic.

David and his friends had different foundations. David’s foundation was the Lord.

My Garden: A Cucumber

David had the gift of making friends, and he was often very good at choosing good friends. David’s friends were just as much God’s people as he was, but these friends seemed to live in a different mental world.

They had so much in common with our own world today. They lived, and we live, in a world of a contagious selective amnesia. We forget that the Lord is our way: “the way, and the truth, and the life”. And we forget that the Lord is the real foundation of everything.



After all, the Lord made the heavens, and the earth, and all things visible and invisible. God still makes everything. The Lord still is King. The Lord rules!

The mental world we live in exists in a continual state of crisis and panic; and it is contagious. Even God’s people catch the contagion and spread it among themselves. Election time is the worst time for this.



A Praying Mantis on the Church Door

If we look at the politics of our own nation we can see the contagion of panic. Both sides seem to tell us that this November will either bring the salvation or the doom of the nation.

When we look at the culture and the spiritual state of our nation, we also see the crumbling of the foundations. As God’s people, we think that one of the most important foundations of our heritage is faith, and we see the decline of the value and the unity of faith.

But faith is not our foundation. Faith was not the foundation of the colonists who came to the original colonies, even when they came here for the freedom of living their faith. Their foundation was not their faith. Their foundation was God.

Faith was not their heritage. Faith was the gift of God who was the ground that fed their roots. God was the rock that supported them as their real foundation. Their faith was created by God, and they trusted in God to continually recreate and renew their faith.

If they and their communities lost their faith, they trusted God to bring them to faith again, in his own time. They would be concerned for this. They would work for this. They would pray for this. But they would not panic over this, because they remembered to focus on the foundation that never changes. They remembered to see the face of the Lord who does not know when to stop.

This is true of everything we hold dear: in our church, in our small communities, in our nation. This is true of every relationship we treasure and value; our loved ones, our work, our way of life, and everything that shapes us.

It is true that everything is a potential source of panic if it goes wrong. Everything we know could come crashing down, and bring us down with it. This is true.



A Rabbit on my Driveway

But Jesus is the Lord who came down to us with a faithfulness that does not stop. This is where we can see his face. Nothing is more foundational to God than his own faithfulness.

His faithfulness is wrapped up in his holiness. His faithfulness goes hand in hand with his love of righteousness and justice. His faithfulness is a thing that refuses to stop, even in the face of death itself. His faithfulness is a foundation that never stops, even on a cross.

God’s faithfulness is the foundation that cannot be destroyed. Those who truly build upon that foundation will not panic.

The Jesus Song-Book: The Boomerang Principle

Preached on Sunday, July 29, 2012

Scripture readings: Psalm 7; Matthew 7:7-23

As a child I was very confused about what Jesus said: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12) Children can be very practical, and this turned out to be not very practical advice. I thought it meant that if I was nice to other kids, they would be nice to me. But, you know, that doesn’t always work on the playground, or anywhere else for that matter.

Entering California from the north; Mt. Shasta in the clouds

The truth is that, being so practical, I saw doing to others as a kind of bargain. It was (potentially) a way of obligating other people to treat me the way I wanted to be treated. It was a way to get what I wanted.

When that failed, it became my way of being better than other kids. It became my way of earning points with Jesus who told me to do this. Looking at it this way made me both self righteous and unhappy at the same time; which explains so much about so many so-called “religious” people.

It’s a real failing. It’s a great scandal of the church. It requires a lot of insight in order to catch yourself at it, and it takes a lot of well aimed repentance when you do, because it grows like a weed, and it sends roots everywhere.

This is the temptation that hides behind the anger and the confusion of David who may have written this psalm, or the person who wrote this psalm for David’s royal family after him.

The anger revealed in this psalm, by David or one of the kings of the royal family of David, comes from a betrayal of the bargain implied by doing to others what you would have them do to you. There was a tradition that David stood for, and his family (as the royal family) stood for after him. It was a tradition of humble gallantry and generosity to friend and foe alike. They were not always good at the tradition, but it was the bargain they lived by.

David had started out as a simple shepherd boy who drove the predators from his father’s flocks and played his harp and sang to the sheep to calm them. Then he killed the giant Goliath with a sling shot and he became a successful commander of the troops under King Saul, and (at the same time) a sort of musical therapist for King Saul.

Little cinder cone next to Mt. Shasta

The Lord had chosen David to be king in Saul’s place, and David knew this, but he never said anything about it, and he never raised his hand against the king. David loved Saul and Saul’s family. He never bargained for his own importance or power. Sooner or later, it was always given to him.

King Saul grew suspicious of David’s influence even though Saul had given David that influence. Saul tried to kill David, and David ran away, and lived in the wilderness. Other fugitives were drawn to David so that he became the leader of something like a rogue militia; but he never used his men in any kind of resistance against the King. David protected the villages and tribes on the frontiers of the kingdom, and Saul would sometimes take his army out to catch David, and kill him and his men.

David, out in the wilderness, became a kind of Robin Hood who protected the defenseless, and raided the tribes who tried to raid the people of Israel. David had chances to ambush and capture and kill King Saul, but he refused to do that. In the end King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in a war against some of the enemy tribes, and the people made David king, in Saul’s place.

But Saul’s own tribe, the tribe of Benjamin, often played a part in resisting David and the kings who were descended from him. They accused David of treachery, and they treated his family’s claim to the throne as a trick and a fraud.

Sometime; in David’s time, or in the time of the kings who followed, there was a crisis in the kingdom. It was centered in Saul’s tribe, in the tribe of Benjamin. David and his family would have seen this crisis as a betrayal of their heritage of gallantry and generosity toward Saul and his family.

We are told (in the ancient heading of the psalm) that Cush was behind it, but we don’t have any idea who or what “Cush the Benjaminite” was. We don’t know if it was an individual, or some tribal unit of Benjamin. We don’t know what Cush did; only that it was of great danger to David, or his to family, or to the whole kingdom.

What would David have done? David would have reacted out of a sense of betrayal; with outrage and righteous indignation. This is what he would have felt that first time when he lost everything; when (in spite of his ferocious loyalty) his master, Saul, turned against him; when his colleagues in the royal court spoke against him to the king, and conspired against him.

Headed south through Sacramento Valley, northern California

“If I had done this…!” “If I had done this…!

David would have written that, if he had done to others what others were doing to him, he would have deserved the crisis that threatened to destroy him. If he had said about others what others were saying about him, then he would have deserved the crisis that threatened to destroy him.

David would have said this directly to God. He would have made it into a song in which the heart could wring every ounce of fury out of it. Here we have that song and it shows us a kind of miracle in which the personal outrage of David turns into a prayer that prays its way through fury into the strange peace and wisdom that follow. “I will give thanks to the Lord because of his righteousness.” (Psalm 7:17)

“O Lord my God, if I have done this and there is guilt on my hands – if I have done evil to him who is at peace with me, or without cause have robbed my foe – then let my enemy pursue and overtake me; let him trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in the dust.” (Psalm 7:3-5)

Psalm number seven is a song written for worship. It is a song to sing when the bargain breaks down, when trust is broken, when loyalty and generosity are betrayed, when the hurt goes deep.

David would have sung this song in the wilderness. The kings who ruled in his name would have had this song sung in their behalf in the temple Solomon had built. Jesus grew up singing this song about the betrayal of trust, the betrayal of generosity, and the strange peace and wisdom that follows.

Headed south through San Joaquin Valley, central California

This psalm shows us a kind of life with God that is common to all the psalms, but we are not always able to put it together. The psalms show us a way of life that is much too big for us. It stretches us by giving us more than we know what to do with.

This psalm is both fierce and serene. Some people are drawn to a ferociously intense faith. Other people want something calmer and they are afraid of that fierce faith.

Some people are drawn to a serenity of faith, and there are other people who are afraid of that serenity. They think it is a betrayal of the intensity that exists in God, and which God desires to share with us. How dare we quench God’s “flaming arrows”! ((Psalm 7:13)

Psalm number seven has a special lesson for us here. I was surprised by this. I was reading the comments written by the early Christians in the first few centuries of our faith. They lived ferociously intense lives in a world that was often violently opposed to them. They lived in a world that held them in contempt. Those threatened, endangered Christians saw, in this psalm, a special lesson about the ferocious intensity and the strange serenity and wisdom of the goodness of God.

They see the God whom (the psalm says) “expresses his wrath every day”. “He will sharpen his sword; he will bend and string his bow. He has prepared his deadly weapons; he makes ready his flaming arrows.” (Psalm 7:11-13)

And then, what; what happens? We expect God to thrust with his sword and to release his arrows, and what happens next?

In this psalm the God’s arrow never leaves the bow, but the target falls into a hole he has dug for himself. God’s sword never makes a thrust, but a liar is cut by his own lies. Those who betray the bargain, those who betray the innocence of others and their trust and generosity, betray themselves. “The trouble he causes recoils on himself.” (Psalm 7:16)

Headed into San Bernardino Mts. in southern California

Those who reject graciousness impregnate themselves with their own rejection. “He who is pregnant with evil and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment (or lies).” (Psalm 7:14) It is as if they cast a spell upon themselves.

Eugene Peterson has a more vivid way of putting this, in his paraphrase/translation. “Look at that guy! He had sex with sin, he’s pregnant with evil. O, look! He’s having the baby – a Lie-Baby!” And, as Peterson puts it, “That’s what happens, mischief backfires, violence boomerangs.” (Psalm 7:14, 16)

This is the moral and spiritual intensity of God. This is the anger of God. God relentlessly allows us to throw our boomerangs. His righteous sentence is that we will go on throwing these boomerangs of ill will, and anger, and frustration, and selfishness, and lust, and unfaithfulness with the design that these boomerangs will come back upon us.

We are the wrath of God upon ourselves. We see this clearly in other people's lives, and it is true of us, as well.

But the boomerang principle breaks down, because it is not your usual boomerang. When we through this boomerang, it often hits its target before it comes back on us. Those who were going to be hurt by their own intentions and by their own actions had hit David first, and he felt it. He was in pain.

This hurt made him into a volcano that seethed with anger and indignation. It also made him into a volcano with intelligent and trusting eyes that could see God’s wrath as the boomerang. Those who hit him would hit themselves as well.

David saw that the real evil of this world was the evil of the boomerang throwers. David’s thoughts began with the pain of the injuries that others caused him. In the end he saw that the fact of most lasting importance was not the harm that the boomerang throwers did to him, but the harm they did to themselves.

This is not the way we think. God has designed his righteousness and judgment not as a form of punishment, but as a method which allowed the throwers, and their throwing business, to disable themselves. They would make themselves a dying breed.

In the center of this song the whole world gets gathered together by God as a fellowship of boomerang throwers. We will all stand together for the judgment of God.

"Rim of the World" in San Bernardino Mts.

When the writer says, Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness.” He is not claiming to be better than his attackers. He is claiming to be in the right when they have done him this wrong. But David trusts that he will also stand in that fellowship of boomerang throwers.

David knows that God is a God “who searches minds and hearts”. (Psalm 7:9) David knows that his own mind and heart will be searched. David would face more that the working of an impersonal law of the boomerang. He would face his personal responsibility to a personal God.

God is all about relationships. This is what we mean when we say that the God of the Bible is a God of covenants. God covenants and holds relationships with his creations. God, by nature, shields what he has made. God shelters what he has made. This is why David sings about, “My shield is God most high.”  (Psalm 7:10) This is why he sings, O Lord my God, I take refuge in you.”  (Psalm 7:1)

God is angered by the breaking of his shields and the invasion of the shelters he has put around his creatures. But God, in his anger, does not forget the value of those shields and shelters. They are made for people. They are made for souls. God continues to deal with us as people and as souls.

So the psalm tells us that, in this anger God, searches hearts and minds; just as a loving parent searches the heart and soul of a child who has done something wrong. God relates and deals with us as people, even though he rules us “from on high”; from a level we cannot imagine.

In the end, Jesus says that the people who call him “Lord” and who think they have done all kinds of wonderful things for him will have minds and hearts that are unrecognizable to him. Jesus tells us that he will say to them, “I never knew you.” Just as the worst evil in the psalm is the evil that people boomerang upon themselves, so there is an evildoing that makes our minds and our hearts unrecognizable to God in Christ.

The wisdom of Jesus that says, “Do to others what you would have them do to you,” is not a bargain, or a way of earning points, or a way of obligating others, or obligating God.

A bit of freeway near the San Bernardino Mts.

It is the humble gallantry and generosity that imitates the grace of God. It is God’s way of teaching us to live in his grace and to get familiar with it, to get used to it; to do for others what God has done for us. It is really the grace of God in Christ for us.

It is God’s heart and mind. It is what we see when we look at the cross of Jesus. Jesus knows us (he recognizes us) when he sees the way of his cross in us. We take refuge in the Lord when we abandon the boomerang life and trust him to be our shield, when we go forth and live as he says, with gallantry and generosity for others.